Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:35:03 -0400
From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
To: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] de-semaphorize smackfs
Message-ID: <20080318073503.GA25958@infradead.org>
References: <30338.1205795680@vena.lwn.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <30338.1205795680@vena.lwn.net>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01)
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 823
Lines: 16

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 05:14:40PM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> While looking at the generic semaphore patch, I came to wonder what the
> remaining semaphore users in the kernel were actually doing.  After a
> quick grep for down_interruptible(), smackfs remained at the bottom of
> my screen.  It seems like a straightforward mutex case - low-hanging
> fruit.  So here's a conversion patch; compile-tested only, but what
> could go wrong?

The lock is kept while returning to userspace and could potentially
be release by another process.  This is not allowed for mutexes.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/